


you made my life a happy one

by bringyouhometoo



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-27
Updated: 2012-10-27
Packaged: 2017-11-17 03:59:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/547381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bringyouhometoo/pseuds/bringyouhometoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor says goodbye the only way he knows how; by holding on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you made my life a happy one

**Author's Note:**

> Set somewhere after The Angels Take Manhattan for the Doctor, and somewhere during The Power Of Three for the Ponds.

He comes back, because he misses them; and that’s all there is to it.

That, and the fact that he wakes up one night — or day, or evening, at some point after finally slipping into a haze of blissful unconsciousness of  _not thinking_  — with one thought crystal clear in his mind; there’s something he hasn’t done yet.

Something that happened for them but not for him, not yet; something that’s still in his future.

And the sheer thought of that — that they are still in his future, that there still  _is_  a future with them in it — propels him out of his seat in the library and into the console room before the thoughts are even fully formed. 

What had Amy said? Something about Zygons. Henry VIII. Their wedding anniversary, which gives him a date to aim for.

And Rory…it hadn’t been important, it had just been an aside, because of course to  _them_  it’s been and gone and all-but-forgotten, but…the cubes.  _The cubes_. Of course that’s not done with. He should have known. 

—

He arrives with a bouquet of roses, and a room booked at the Savoy, and a smile so wide he thinks it _might_  almost be convincing.

Amy pulls him into a hug without so much as a second thought, her arms folding around his back and her hair in his face and her skin, all heat and coconut and  _Amelia_ , pressing against his, and he buries his face in her shoulder and lets himself  _breathe_.

And then Rory’s there, his arms somehow curling around both him and Amy, his face fitting into the space between their shoulders, his added warmth and weight and soft scent of coffee blending in until the Doctor can’t tell the difference between him and her, between limbs and faces and shoulders, and he’s just standing there and they’re both wrapped around him and he wants to smile but can’t quite manage it any more, not when he’s got them back and they’re  _here_ , here and now and  _alive._

And then, of course, Amy shoves him away with a laugh, and tells him off for being gone for so long, and Rory fills him in on what’s been going on with the cubes — nothing, so far — and they decide they’d rather sneak off now than try and explain why they’re leaving their own anniversary party; so it’s off to the nineteenth century they go. He sends them both off to get changed into something appropriate, because if he’s going to do this — if he’s going to give them this, if he wants it to work — he’s going to do it  _properly_.

_—_

“Dinner, bed and breakfast for two,  _bonjour, bonjour, merci, August,_ ” the Doctor announces grandly, stepping out of the TARDIS and gesturing at the marble lobby. “You’ll be back before the party’s over, they won’t even notice you’re gone. No complications, I promise.”

Rory kisses him on the cheek, in a sudden fit of affection, and then the Doctor steps away, the grin that’s tugging at his lips almost impossibly wide. He slips away, though, back into the safety of his console room, shutting the doors behind him with a snap of his fingers; but not before he seems Amy’s giddy smile, and Rory’s half-disbelieving laugh. The happiness tugs at his hearts, and it hurts in the best way possible; maybe he’s done this one thing right.

—

Except it doesn’t quite work out like that. 

He goes for a walk on New New Earth; pops in to see the Sontaran colony he last saw settling into a new life on a new planet where they wouldn’t be any harm to anyone; has tea in the Restaurant At The End Of The Universe; drops in on Jo and says hello to Santiago and his many siblings, canoeing down the Amazon river. And then quite suddenly he’s setting the coordinates back for the Savoy, and he misses them already. 

His knock on their hotel room door is hesitant; quiet; slow; if they’re — well, he doesn’t want them to be interrupted if — he knocks quietly, just in case, anyway. To his mild surprise, though, Amy opens the door almost immediately, a dressing gown wrapped around herself and a wide smile on her lips.

“Found us at last, then?”

“Sorry,” the Doctor mumbles, bewildered. “What?”

“We were sort of wondering why you’d bring us here just to  _leave_ ,” Rory pipes up from where he’s reclining on the sofa. “Not really you.”

“Right, yeah, about that,” the Doctor mumbled, grinning somewhat reluctantly; Amy just rolls her eyes and pulls him inside by one tweed lapel.

—

It’s not something they’ve ever discussed, not really. 

It’s just — well, when they get out of some scrape or when they’ve saved the day somehow, Amy gets a bit — well. She just likes explosions, and running away from things that explode, and afterwards she likes kissing someone. And that’s usually Rory. That’s why he’s here. Well, no, but that’s sort of the reason the Doctor brought him along in the first place. Because of the…kissing thing. Except Rory isn’t always exactly around, technically. It happens.

And, well. When Amy Pond wants to kiss you, you kiss back. It happens.

Rory probably minded, once, which is why the Doctor tried so very hard to never let it become a thing. Except at some point there is a slight, but definite shift. Rory isn’t jealous, not in the way the Doctor assumed he is. He’s just…also there. And, well. He’s a Pond. He likes explosions, and he likes running away from explosions, and afterwards he quite likes forgetting all about everything apart from the part where  _we survived and we’re all okay_  and that starts as hugs, and hands, and heads on shoulders, and then it’s kissing, and then somehow, at some point, they just sort of…forget to stop before they get to the point where clothes come off.

Well. When Amy Pond’s kissing you, and Rory Williams is peeling your jacket off, you tend not to complain. It happens.

And it’s just…okay. They don’t really need to talk about it, because there’s nothing to talk about; it’s something they do sometimes, probably more often than any one of them realises. And it makes him happy, so happy, and he thinks a large part of that is that he knows  _it makes them happy too_ , that this is something he can give them that is happy and unimportant and simple. 

—

So of course he knocks on their door. And of course they let him in. 

And for a moment, the memories crowd in —  Rory’s fingers resting on his hip, curling lightly against the brace and watching it snap back before they leave the TARDIS; Amy’s hand finding one of his and one of Rory’s, swinging their arms between them as they wander past skyscrapers and neon lights;  Rory’s hand coming to brush, lightly, against his knee just before he leans to press a kiss to Amy’s lips and jumps up to go get coffee; Amy’s breath warm against his ear as he tries to hide his smile and turn another page of his book in Central Park — but then he blinks and it’s gone, it hasn’t happened yet, it’s never going to happen, not if he just keeps them here and now and in this hotel room where he can see them and hold on to them and keep them safe.

It’s a dream, of course; an impossible fantasy; a stupidly indulgent one, at that, because he knows what has to happen. What always has to happen. What will always happen.

For now, though, his fingers are fumbling with the ties of Amy’s robe, and Rory is standing behind him, his lips somehow pressed to every weak spot on the Doctor’s neck all at once, and Amy’s leaning in to kiss him with a slightly breathless giggle; and he can be happy, right here, right now.

—

Brian confronts him about it when they finally get back, five minutes later and with seven weeks of running away from exploding things under their belt. And he asks what’s going to happen to Amy and Rory, but he doesn’t ask it so directly, no; Brian goes for the heart of it, the painful centre of everything, and asks the Doctor what happened to the others.

And, yes. Some of them died, and to even think about it, even for a second, to say the words out loud, sends his hearts stuttering into an uneven stammer of  _adric peri grace ace romana susan susan susan SUSAN astridanddonnaandriverandnogodpleaseamynororyno amyamyamy —_

“Not them, Brian,” he says, because if he says it enough times he’ll start to believe it. “Never them.”

Never, ever, them; that’s what he has to hold on to, that’s all he has left now. They’re safe and happy and growing old and  _that’s not the same as dying,_  not to them; never them.

—

“Can I stay? Here. With you. And Rory. For a bit?”

He doesn’t understand why those words are so hard to get out, never mind actually putting them in the right order; he’s been waiting for the right moment to ask for a couple of hours now, weighing up the options, choosing his words. It’s not like he’s  _completely_ off-limits, after all. The cubes  _do_ need sorting out. And he has every right to ask to stay, to investigate, to figure this out. And….

“I….miss you.”

Amy’s smile softens, and she nods, gently, nudging him in the side. She understands; sometimes, he thinks she understands far too much, that she understands  _all_ of it. 

It might be best not to dwell on that.

—

“He’s gonna stay for a bit,” she tells Rory, and it’s as simple as that.

And later, when the guests have all said good night and Brian’s headed off home and the kitchen has been cleared and the Doctor has broken two plates and a jug in his attempts to help: later, when they lead him upstairs like it’s the most natural thing to do in the world; the Doctor says goodbye in the only way he knows how. By holding on.

He clings to them. Sinks into each kiss like he’s drowning. Lets his hands roam and stroke and touch, everywhere, every scrap of skin he can touch while it’s still tangible and here and now. Moans into Amy’s shoulder when Rory’s lips close around him. Hisses in sharp surprised ecstasy when Amy pushes him backwards and kneels over him, angling her hips and rising up and then  _sinking down_ and  _yesgodyesamyamyamyyes_  — and Rory’s hands are everywhere, skimming over his stomach, counting each rib,  he’s kissing him, slow and hot and messy, and everything is heat and lovely and good and yes, please, more,  _god.._.

And after he’s collapsed back into the pillows and caught his breath, he flips them over in a flurry of giggles and short kisses, until Amy’s on her back and looking up at him with wide happy eyes; and he kisses her, kisses from her lips to her throat to her collarbone to her breasts to her stomach to each hip bone — “please, Doctor,  _yes,” —_ and he licks against her again and again, until he finds a pace and rhythm that sends her over the edge, his tongue teasing every last scrap of sensation out of her, leaving her a quivering mess on the sheets. He sits up with a small smirk that’s more of a smile, because she just looks so… _his_. His Amelia. Happy and lovely and loved, and  _happy_ , and that’s all he needs. 

Rory’s lying beside her, his face pressed against her shoulderblade, and then it’s the easiest thing to crawl into the space between them, alternating between kisses to her skin and kisses to his, anything he can reach, any inch he can love and revere and worship before it fades from him; and when he’s lying on the pillow with his eyes turned towards Amy, his hand finds Rory, and they move together, finding some kind of rhythm that works for all of them, and when Rory moves their hands to close, gently, around his erection, the Doctor shuts his eyes and leans forwards to kiss Amy; his hand moving with Rory, for Rory, against Rory, and his lips tangling with Amy, for Amy, against Amy — and they’re everything, they’re everything and everywhere and they’re so, so, so good and happy and important and he can’t quite believe he gets this, at least for a while, it doesn’t seem fair, he certainly doesn’t deserve it —

“Doctor?”

“Mmh?”

“Shut up.”

“Wasn’t —” he gasps against Rory’s touch. “Saying — anything.”

“Your brain was going insane again,” Amy whispers into his open lips. “Stop it. Be  _here_ , and  _now_ , okay?”

He nods mutely, letting his eyes fall shut again; here, now. Yeah, he can do that.

—

He takes them to see the moon landing,  _properly_ this time, and then they somehow end up building the front left leg of the Horse of Troy (but they slip away before they’re asked to actually join in, because this may be history and it may not be something they can or should change; but that doesn’t mean they have to stick around for the bloody messy painful bits), and then they go to pick flowers on Azula, just because they can, and he knows with an awful clenching pain in his stomach that what he’s doing lies somewhere between an apology and a series of dates and a last effort to stop time from happening; and sometimes he knows it’s  _really_  going to hurt this time. Really. It’s going to hurt him, and maybe break him, and it might just be the end of him for a while. 

—

And then they want some time to themselves again, time at home, time in the normal world of jobs and friends and mortgages; and because he’s an idiot and looks at the calendar in their kitchen and sees that the date is the 20th of September, and when they see him next they’ll tell him with a fond laugh  _“it’s only been a week,”_  he just…knows. This is the day he says goodbye to them.

That’s how it happens, because it has to.

—

And he kisses them both, suddenly shy and strange and awful at keeping a straight face.

And they let him go, with something like worry in Rory’s eyes, something like understanding in Amy’s.

—

And he’s alone.

But they aren’t. 

And he still has her last page; and he clings to it, runs his fingers over and over each indent in the print until he has memorised the shape of each word, the rise and fall of each letter. 

_Know that we are very happy, and that we’ll always love you._

It’s not enough — will never be enough — doesn’t fill the aching hole left by their absence in each of his hearts. But they’re happy, and they love each other, and they have known and loved and been loved by him; and he knows, he thinks, he hopes, that there’s no tragedy in that. 


End file.
